Articles from October 2013

We are now offering the latest Centova Cast control panel with all new accounts:

Whether you’re a ShoutCast newbie or a seasoned streaming professional, Centova Cast makes it easy to configure your stream. In addition to providing total control over your streaming server, Centova Cast also provides comprehensive autoDJ system.

When enabled, clients may upload their media (MP3s, etc.) directly to the server via FTP, manage their media through Centova Cast’s comprehensive AJAX Media Library system (described in the following slide), and schedule their media using Centova Cast’s advanced playlist scheduling system (also described on an upcoming slide).

This provides a complete, all-in-one solution for setting up an Internet radio station.

Centova Cast’s AJAX media library brings a familiar, desktop-style media management interface to the web.Media can be searched or browsed by artist, album, title, or genre. Tracks can be added to a playlist simply by dragging and dropping them on the desired playlist. This drag-and-drop functionality can be used to instantly schedule the selected tracks to play at a given time, or on a repeating schedule.

Centova Cast supports multiple playlists for each stream. Each playlist can be configured individually to control precisely how and when it will be played — at a specific time, on a repeating schedule, or on a rotation schedule with support for ranking by popularity (known as “weighting”).

Centova Cast provides the most comprehensive streaming radio statistics system commercially available today. It provides information about listener trends and demographics, data transfer, track performances and popularity, user agents, and much, much more.

Average session length is charted and graphed, and top listeners are ranked according to listener minutes and number of sessions. Listener countries are automatically determined, and the software used by the listener to tune into the stream is noted and identified as a media player or stream ripper to assist in abuse detection.

Top user agents are charted and graphed according to listener minutes and number of sessions. Each user agent is also classified as a legitimate media player (such as WinAmp, iTunes, etc.), or a stream ripper (a program used to steal music from your stream) to assist in abuse detection.

We get this question a lot recently. Its actually a really good way to get traffic flowing to your radio station easily.

Its all automatic and as long as your radio station is set to “public” in your live encoder or your auto DJ system, you will be placed in their directory automatically. However you need to be in the SHOUTcast top 500 stations. This means your stream needs to be pulling in on average 50 simultaneous listeners throughout the day.

To have your SHOUTcast radio station listed on Tune IN mobile app is great. Its a feature that ranks highly with those that would like to have their radio stream available on other mobile devices other than the iPhone and those who would like more traffic driven to their radio stream. One app which we love is Tune.IN which can be found at tunein.com

The first thing you will need to do is register for a broadcaster account with them. This is pretty simple. Once you register your shoutcast stream you will need to provide something called a direct link.

Below you can see an example of what a direct link in html looks like. This is what tune.in will want. Simple change the CAPS section “STATIONIP and PORT to those which your shoutcast stream uses and submit.

We have gone 100% green and have eliminated using any data centers not following this practice. All SHOUTcast servers are powered by 100% wind energy.

Our energy supplier is Hydro Québec, whose electricity production is100% renewable, and 98% from hydroelectricity. Hydroelectricity only produces just 4 grams of CO2 per Kwh of electricity. That’s 56% less CO2 than wind energy, and less than 1% of that of natural gas and coal. In Québec electricity generation represents just 1% of all Green House Gas emissions, versus 32.5% in the USA.

We use high-tech free cooling technology to cool two of our data centers, cooling your servers using the cold Canadian winter air. Average temperatures in Montreal are significantly lower than most of the United States, with average minimum temperatures below freezing for five months of the year.

Server energy usage is lower depending on the level of server stress, dropping to less than 50% of the maximum energy utilization depending on traffic.

Follow these easy steps to get a free shoutcast flash player. The player uses JWplayer technology and works with our services and is free to use with other shoutcast hosting providers.

Simply take the code below and paste it into your website html where you would like the player to be displayed. Once you paste the code change the servernetwork:port to your server network name or IP and the port you are using e.g. (lime.citrus3.com:8000) :

The auth hash is a file located in the server dnas which tells the shoutcast directory that you want to make your station public on their directory. It also includes your stream info such as radio station name, url of your radio station website, and the genre of your broadcast. If you don’t have an auth hash and you attempt to broadcast as “public” set in your encoder your stream will fail and you will not be able to listen via a media player until you switch back to “private” (or create the auth hash)

To create the authhash you will first need to start broadcasting, switch on your live encoder or your auto DJ, BS make sure your shoutcast server is running. Simply login to your server dnas. To login to your dnas use your server IP and port. If your server is lemon.cirus3.com and the port 8000 then you would visit http://lemon.citrus3.com:8000/admin.cgi (make sure you go to admin.cgi WITHOUT ANYTHING after .CGI) and login using admin as your username and the “administration” password provided in the control panel. Once logged in simply click create authhash and fill in your station details.

You can now start your encoders and continue streaming public with your station being listed.